Editorials

A. J. P. Martin (centre), D. H. Desty (L), V. Pretorius (R)

9 0 th Birthday ofA. J. P. Martin

The 1 st of March marks the 90 th birthday of Archer Martin who, with his equally remarkable co-worker Richard Synge, won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1952 for their development of partition chromato- graphy some eleven years earlier [ 1 ]. To honour the birthdays of distinguished scientists it is the custom of Chromatographia to publish a short article on their achievements, the regard of their colleagues and good wishes for the future. However, as many readers of Chromatographia will know, Dr. Martin has been suffering from Alzheimer's Disease for a number of years and so the normal encomium is not appropriate. It has, therefore, been decided to re-publish an Opening Lecture that Dr. Martin gave at the 4 m Interna- tional Symposium on (Gas) Chromatography in Hamburg in 1962 when he was at the height of his intellectual powers [2]. In view of the developments taking place in miniaturisation and the recent creation of "nanotweezers" [3], the prescience exhibited in this address is quite astonishing. It is hoped that re- publication of this paper will help current workers to appreciate the outstanding achievements of Dr. Martin and encourage them to read the papers in the early symposia where they will find many ideas which failed to reach fruition at the time but which might repay fresh examination in the light of the advances in instrumentation and electronics since their original publication. Chromatographia is grateful to Mrs. Judith Martin for permission to reproduce Dr Martin's paper.

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E. R. Adlard

[1] A. J R Martin, R. L. M. Synge, "A new form of chromatogram em- ploying two liquidphases'. Biochem. J. 35, 1358 (1941).

[2] "Future possibilities in Micro-analysis" Second Opening Lecture at the 4 th International Symposium on Gas Chromatography, Hamburg

13-16 June 1962. xxvii-xxxiii. Butterworths, London 1962 Edited by M. van Swaay.

[3] C.M. Lieber, R Kim, Science 286, 2148 (1999).

Editorials

0009-5893/00/03 255-07 $03.00/0

Chromatographia Vol. 51, No. 5/6, March 2000

�9 2000 Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn Verlagsgesellschaft mbH

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